Jeffrey Loria and the Marlins’ front office need to save face as much as anyone since Harvey Dent (dated pop culture reference: check). One suggestion has been that they should re-sign their one remaining superstar, Giancarlo Stanton. That is easier said than done, given that Stanton publicly expressed displeasure in the immediate wake of the team’s massive trade with Toronto. Even if he had not, why would any player want to make a long-term commitment to the Marlins at this point (note to Giancarlo: make sure and get that no-trade clause in writing. Also, stick with rentals.)?

As Buster Olney points out, even if one thinks Stanton is unlikely to sign an extension, if the Marlins do at least make a good faith offer, they can at least say they tried, which in itself would be progress and might help them a bit in the court of public opinion. If he turns it down, at least they could feel free to trade him when is value is highest. Naturally, Loria is saying exactly the wrong thing: “Giancarlo needs to play this year.” Aside from the particulars of the whole Marlins mess, when considering how much it would cost to extend Stanton, not many recent comparisons come to mind. Olney cites an agent to compares Stanton to the Rockies’ Carlos Gonzalez after his 2010 season, when he signed for seven-years and $80 million dollars. That comparison makes sense in that Gonzalez was then and Stanton is now young, talented, and still a year away from arbitration eligibility. A comparison with Gonzalez is a helpful starting point, but beyond the increased money in baseball now, there are good reasons to think a Stanton extension would be significantly bigger. As good as Gonzalez was and is, Stanton projects to be even more valuable.

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Craig Calcaterra made me do something I have not done for a long time yesterday: think about Deion Sanders. Calcaterra’s post is worth reading in itself (at least click the link to see an incredibly time-bound photograph), as it is reflection on Buster Olney’s (annual) reflection (how meta!) on some interaction Olney had with Deion Sanders years ago as a rookie reporter. Okay, that sounds equal parts boring and confusing, but Craig makes it funny, at least to me. Leaving aside the mystery of why Olney makes this his annual Spring Training Kickoff Tradition and what it is supposed to mean (nothing against Olney; like Craig, I am simply baffled by the whole thing): man, it has been a long time since I’ve thought about Deion Sanders, especially Deion Sanders the baseball player.

My memories of that are pretty hazy, so others can recall various cool, fun, or just ridiculous Deion Sanders stories. I do not want to take that approach and end up with a car wreck of a post. Sanders had his moments on the diamond, and the whole part-time football/baseball thing is itself a curious artifact of the past. (The latter is worth a long post in its own right. “Well, sure, I could make millions guaranteed, but I think I’d rather spend part of the year doing something far more dangerous for non-guaranteed money.”) Leaving all of that aside, I was struck by just how unusual, especially these days, Sanders combination of skills was. What players recently have had seasons like Neon Deion at his best?

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For at least three franchises, this offseason could have taken a very different path. When Justin Upton vetoed a trade to the Mariners, he altered the direction of Seattle, Arizona and Atlanta, at the very least. Such negated transactions make for fascinating what-if’s, and now that we are edging into the time of year when all we will read is “best shape of my career” posts, I thought we could step back and take a look at some of these.

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Last season, the Rockies had what was arguably the worst season in their 20 as a franchise. There were plenty of culprits — a porous defense and Troy Tulowitzki getting hurt yet again were two large factors. But the chief culprit for Colorado’s 98-loss season was the worst starting rotation in franchise history. In response to this, the Rockies have gone out and signed Jeff Francis, Miguel Batista and Chris Volstad. These signings probably will have no material effect on the team’s rotation, but if they do, they won’t be signings that push the Rockies toward contention, but rather mediocrity.

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Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections, which have typically appeared in the pages of Baseball Think Factory, are being released at FanGraphs this year. Below are the projections for the Colorado Rockies. Szymborski can be found on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other 2013 Projections: Angels / Astros / Athletics / Blue Jays / Brewers / Cubs / Giants / Nationals / Phillies / Pirates / Rangers / Royals / White Sox.

Batters
It is not surprising to find that, among Colorado’s field players, ZiPS finds two stars: Troy Tulowitzki and Carlos Gonzalez. The former, in particular, is fantastic on a per-game basis; however, injury trouble has created a rather conservative plate-appearances projection for Tulo. The shortstop has recently reported a return to form, but remember: ZiPS doesn’t know how or why he’s been injured, just that his playing time has been deflated in the near past.

Elsewhere, like last season, third base appears to be a cause for some concern for the Rockies in 2013. Chris Nelson (0.3 WAR in 377 PA) and Jordan Pacheco (0.2 WAR in 505 PA) started 148 games there between them in 2012. Neither appears to be a starting option on a winning team. Likely second baseman Josh Rutledge, meanwhile, must be a pleasant surprise for the club. Ranked around 10th on most prospect lists entering the 2012 season, ZiPS suggests that he’s become something not unlike a major-league regular.

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With the move of the Houston Astros to the American League, and the unfortunate fact that both leagues will have an uneven number of teams, interleague play is destined to change this year. As cross-platform play goes from something that happens in the middle of June, once a year, like some sort of strange exhibition mini-season, to something that happens every week, the National League will have to re-evaluate their past strategies for American League parks.

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Armed with a new measure for offensive volatility (VOL), I wanted to revisit research I conducted  last year about the value of a consistent offense.

In general, the literature has suggested if you’re comparing two similar offenses, the more consistent offense is preferable throughout the season. The reason has to do with the potential advantages a team can gain when they don’t “waste runs” in blow-out victories. The more evenly a team can distribute their runs, the better than chances of winning more games.

I decided to take my new volatility (VOL) metric and apply it to team-level offense to see if it conformed to this general consensus*.

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Yesterday, the Chicago White Sox warmed the cockles of the present author’s heart by taking 29-year-old infield-type Angel Sanchez from the Angels in the Rule 5 draft. Because Sanchez can play the infield (including shortstop) and because he has some kind of offensive upside (owing to his excellent contact skills) and because he’s cheap (he still has just two years of service time and will likely make the league minimum), Sanchez will allow the White Sox to spend money elsewhere. Or, otherwise, to not spend money elsewhere and just keep that money and use it for whatever, like for a donation to an important New England boarding school.

Players who are chosen in the major-league phase of the Rule 5 draft (as was Sanchez) must be kept on the selecting team’s 25-man major league roster for the entire season after the draft — which suggests, if he’s retained by the White Sox, that Sanchez will fill some manner of utility role behind Gordon Beckham, Jeff Keppinger, and Alexei Ramirez.

Paying a player like Sanchez at or near the league-minimum salary would seem to give the signing time a competitive advantage. It’s also possible that that’s not the case at all. What the author found himself wondering — and what he attempted to answer by means of this post — is the question: “How much are utility infielders worth these days?”

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The Reds have been looking for a consistent leadoff hitter since the current iteration of the team began contention in 2010. Drew Stubbs was supposed to fill that role, but his performance has trended the wrong way since 2009 — after a sharp 105 wRC+ in 2010, Stubbs has posted marks of 90 and a brutal 64 in 2011 and 2012 respectively. Between Stubbs and Zack Cozart, Reds leadoff hitters hit an awful .208/.254/.327 last season.

Now, the Reds are looking to fill the two holes Stubbs’s decline has left them with — leadoff hitter and center field. The club was interested in Ben Revere but the Phillies beat them to the punch. CBSSports.com’s Danny Knobler reports the Reds are shifting their sights towards Rockies outfielder Dexter Fowler.

Knobler reports starting pitcher Mike Leake may be the cost for Fowler. Homer Bailey’s name has popped up as well. Is Fowler enough of an upgrade over Stubbs for the Reds to deal away one of their MLB-ready starting pitchers?

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In a vacuum, you could probably make a decent enough case in favor of exchanging Alex White for Wilton Lopez. As Jeff wrote last week, Lopez is the game’s most extreme high GB/low BB reliever, and this skillset allows him to be an effective late-inning reliever. Lopez is a quality arm, and he can be a key piece of a good bullpen. Meanwhile, White has been pretty lousy during his first 150 innings in the big leagues, and there’s a decent chance that he ends up in the bullpen himself. As one person noted to me on Twitter last night, the Rockies traded a guy I’ve projected as a reliever in the past for a better reliever.

There’s just a few problems here. The primary one regards the health of Lopez’s right arm. The reported deal with the Phillies that never materialized last week apparently included Philadelphia having some significant concern over his elbow, and a couple of folks here in Nashville have said that Lopez flunked a physical at the trade deadline that nuked a trade for him back in July. When there’s smoke, there’s often fire, and the fact that Lopez spent a month of the 2012 season on the DL with an elbow issue suggests that there’s almost certainly something there worth worrying about. Without access to the medical information and people who can intelligently interpret it, we can’t say to what degree Lopez is damaged goods, but it is clear that other teams have serious concerns about how long Lopez’s elbow is going to last before he needs surgery.

However, predicting injuries isn’t something anyone has mastered, so let’s just assume for now that Lopez is going to stay healthy. Even with that assumption, it’s not clear that this is a significant upgrade for Colorado relative to simply shifting White to the bullpen.

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